COST OF EDUCATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 July 1922, Page 7

COST OF EDUCATION.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —The Council of Education, the Educational Institute, the various education boards, some of the school committees, several other bodies and a number of interested and interesting individuals having criticised, mostly adversely, the articles on the cost of education you were good enough to publish for me some weeks ago, I am sure you Will allow me a few words in reply. I will be as brief as I can be, but have no wish to evade any of the points raised by my critics. The main counts in the indictment directed against my articles by these high authorities are (1) that they were “inspired”; (2) that they offered violence to the high ideals entertained by the founders of the national system of education; (3) that their purpose was to create a prejudice against the education boards and to assist in bringing about their abolition and the centralisation of all authority in the head office in Wellington; and (4) that "enormous” was not the right word to apply to the expenditure upon education. As for the charge that the articles were “inspired," this is not the most serious of the counts, though it probably is intended to imply I expressed the views of someone in authority who preferred to remain in the background. If this really is the intention of my critics, I can .assure them that I hard received no inspiration from the Minister or the secretary of his Department, or the Director of Education or any less exalted person who might' desire me to seek admission to your columns under false pretences. My sole purpose in writi-ig was to direct public attention to expenditure on education which I thought, and still think, could be saved without impairing the system in a single particular. I should be sorry indeed to think I had been guilty of offering any affront to "the founders of the Dominion’s education system," hut one of my Canterbury critics, apparently speaking for the local education board, wonders what t.ip late Sir Charles Bowen and the late Mr. Alfred Saunders would have thought of my suggestion towards economy. It was my good fortune, in the days of my comparative youth, to be on particularly intimate terms with both these gentlemen, and I would subscribe wholeheartedly to any high tribute that might be paid to their memory. But my own wonder—using the word as my dritic does—is what they would have thought of the recent growth in the cost of education. Sir Charles Bowen, the author of the original Education Act, proposed in the first instance tn insure economical administration by requiring parents to pay a certain part of the cost of the system. He abandoned the proposal after the second reading of the Bill and Until the very last years of his useful life continued to serve the cause of education with consistent devotion and ability. But while insisting upon efficiency he kept a very jealous eye on the expenditure, fearing that by its very cost the system might fall into disfavor and In some time of national stress suffer at the hands of an economising Government. As for Mr. Alfred Saunders, those of us who remember his views on public finance will have no difficulty in imagining what he would have thought and said had he witnessed the expenditure upon education increase by nearly a million

and a half in eight years without providing any appreciable improvement in the system. I certainly had no intention either to belittle the very excellent work done by the education hoards, nor to assist—if anyone is seeking that end—in bringing about their abolition. But surely when it is shown that many thousands of pounds a year could be saved by transferring a certain amount of routine adimifiTstrative work from the boards to the general office the transfer ought to be made. This would not detract in any way from the dignity; of the boards or from their usefulness. The Minister of Education, by the way, has stated definitely that he is nflt contemplating the abolition of the boards or the school committees, and this being the case my critics ■may dismiss from their minds any unworthy suspicions my inadequate statement of my case may have provoked. There remains that word "enormous.” I am -not disposed to admit it was misapplied to the recent increase in the expenditure upon education, but if my critics prefer to call it "very large’’ we will not quarrel over the measure of a mere adjective. The expenditure in 1914 was £1.131.755 and in 1922 £2,580,562. In Mr. Alfred Saunders's time the expenditure, approximately, was 10s per head of population. To-day it approximately is 50s per head. Of course every responsible member of the community desires that the expenditure upon education shall be as generous ns the country can afford. The Education Department is the very last place in which cheese-paring economies should be attempted. But we have to ask ourselves what the country really can afford. Or, if my critics would rather put it another way, how much the country can afford to reduce its expenditure on education. It can afford nothing that would make for Inefficiency. But, ns I am advised. It could afford to save a very large amount of duplication. unnecessary work, costly methods and superfluous frills, and a certain amount of waste. Mr. Massey Is at his wits’ end to make the revenue and the expenditure of the country balance, and education should not be the last of the Departments to give him the assistance he so urgently requires.—l am. etc., YOUR CONTRIBUTOR.